Tech

Since we first wrote about deepfakes, the practice of producing
AI-assisted fake porn has exploded. More people are creating fake celebrity
porn using machine learning, and the results have become increasingly
convincing. Another redditor even created an app specifically designed to
allow users without a computer science background to create AI-assisted fake
porn. All the tools one needs to make these videos are free, readily
available, and accompanied with instructions that walk novices through the
process.

In an office at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a computer chip is
crunching data from a nearby camera, looking for faces stored in a database.
Seconds later, the same chip, called Thinker, is handling voice commands in
Chinese. Thinker is designed to support neural networks. But what’s special
is how little energy it uses—just eight AA batteries are enough to power it
for a year.

Thinker can dynamically tailor its computing and memory requirements to
meet the needs of the software being run. This is important since many
real-world AI applications—recognizing objects in images or understanding
human speech—require a combination of different kinds of neural networks
with different numbers of layers.

Late last month, a Manhattan judge ordered the New York City Police
Department to release documentation about the department’s use of secretive
and highly controversial “predictive policing” surveillance technology,
scoring a win for advocates of transparency on police policy. The documents
came to light as part of a lawsuit against the city filed by the Brennan
Center for Justice, a New York-based policy institute.